The approach to emotions in our culture and society is dualistic, and even it could be said that it is: quiet hypocritical; towards the outside we appear as though we either govern them or that we don’t have emotions at all…
The higher is the statues of the person is higher – the more he is required to behave as though he does not have any emotions… (Or that they are under strict control).
But inside his emotions are central and put above almost everything else. We live for our emotions and it governs from within secretly and is activating our so called rational considerations.
So, from the outside, on the formal level, the social mask level – we are being conceived as being in complete control of them, operating only from logical factual considerations.
But on the real level – the situation is completely different; we believe that ‘living’ is through and by the emotions, living for us is being emotional, and only when his emotions are activated – he feels that he is alive. And the more powerful they are – the more the person feels more alive. And when the emotions ‘go wild’ – then it is for him a whole emotional celebration…
When a person is being attacked verbally by another, that for few days he is under very difficult emotional state (personal involvement), but what about reality? What about life? In this days that he was under the consequence of the attack – he missed reality, the hurt emotion was stilling the ‘show’. Like a child making much noise that does not allow his parents to talk.
People express objections against other people, but the reason is hardly factual and rational, it is usually – emotional, (but we would hardly admit it).
In this life the emotions are like a minefield, indeed they are mostly repressed, but at the same time they are so exposed, so vulnerable, so sensitive. So much so, that one sentence can ‘paralyze’ us for days. And the highly sensitive persons are being hurt the most. (Which leads them to avoid places and people that can hurt them emotionally).
With it, there is a great lack of emotional experience (because we are so vulnerable – so we repress them), so we are looking for emotional experience (like falling in love) to give us (a false) feeling of being alive.
We are hardly living our life, because our emotions are so powerful that they ‘still’ life from us and create for us our private reality. But emotions aren’t life.
So, at the same time that we are trying, on the outside, to disregard our emotions (and relate mainly to factual deeds and considerations) – inside we might be flooded emotionally, be painful emotionally, bleed emotionally.
Krishnamurti writes about it the following:
“It seems that sometimes we are defiantly stick to emotions any a quiet desperate way, and it seems that we confuse between our psychological state and life itself. So, that if we are not ‘involved’ or do not feel a specific emotion, we doubt where we are alive at all? We even can stick to our suffering as gives to life some sort of meaning, maybe because of the emptiness that would be revealed if we stop to stick”.
((KRISHNAMURTI / TALKS IN EUROPE 1956. P. 62*
Gabriel